Yados

I can't tell if this is nonsensical, literal, or symbolic.

Who would be Darth Vader? Dalinar? Eshonai? 

Has there been a character who has fallen into lava and had to be kept alive with shardplate? I don't think so.

... I do have to wonder if that would work.

I wonder if Brandon made this bit of worldbuilding going off the theory that epicanthic fold is an adaptation to high winds? The modern understanding is that it's an adaptation to cold, but back in the days before Wikipedia I heard a few times people say it was an adaptation to wind. Brandon first started on Roshar a while back, so maybe he made the decision then, and on Roshar it's an adaptation to wind. The Shin are the only people living without high wind.

That Tumblr criticism .. is way too judgmental, and ignorant of Michael Whelan. He drew an anti-stereotype cover way back in the 1970s, with Elric. Elric was written in contrast to buff white guy protagonists; he's skinny, feminine, and chronically ill, and Whelan drew him that way. Of course he's albino so he's still white (sort of) but one can only break so many stereotypes at the same time. Whelan was perfectly willing and able to paint non-stereotypical heroes 35 years ago. If he failed in a sketch of Kaladin, it's only because he didn't know what Kaladin looks like.

It's not easy to figure out from the book; "tan" is probably the least-descriptive word in English for skin color. Fandom didn't figure out the eyes for over a year.

the discussion isn't about whelan cover, though. it was started a week or so before. it's just weird timing on tor's part for them to release a three year old painting with the exact problem we were talking about.   

sure, the kaladin thing was probably done before the way of kings was even finished, but it is pretty disheartening to one of the biggest fantasy artists draws one of the epic genre's least conventional heroes so conventionally. that's valid and that whalen painted a skinny albino guy in 1970s doesn't mean he didn't mess it up here. 

http://kogiopsis.tumblr.com/post/47483528014/do-you-know-how-pissed-i-am-that-people-draw

That's the original post. All the ensuing stuff is in the notes.

It did lead to this piece of fanart. 

http://swamp-spirit.tumblr.com/post/47519867833/since-i-was-complaining-about-other-peoples

As well as my question in the AMA, which confirmed that everyone on Roshar except for the Shin (and presumably Hoid and Demoux) has an epicanthic fold on their eyes, which would make them look non-European to any of us for reasons beyond their skin-tone and whether or not parts of them are made of rocks/metal/wool.

Edit:

It occurs to me now that Dros commented that Kaladin's hair might be blacker.

I read Dros' post as "This pedanic fool thought that he was a blacker and younger dude."

Which means Joe and I could be talking about a completely different series of posts.

The above ones are just about how Kaladin isn't white and it's weird that he's usually drawn that way. Which definitely applies to this painting. 

Blame my fiancee. She spends all my money buying arcs

yeah, but you'll be grateful when the flood comes.

Also: where do you buy advanced reader copies?

Yeah, I was so gung ho about how the second chapter wasn't going to be a mirror scene.

... and then it turned into a mirror scene. Not really happy with that. 

I might cut it and instead do a first chapter at the school, transitioning to what I have now as the first chapter to stand with some contrast. If I'm  writing in YA, finishing school is, I suppose, the more resonant opener for the genre. 

But I'm not going to mess with that now, just write the other opener, let the old one stand as in, and figure out how to arrange it the next time through. Momentum. Like using words that are not actual words. 

Go with your first idea, definitely. 

Seeing this, I'm pretty glad he went with the widescreen landscape. 

Hope he does that again next book. 

HI.

I'm new here and yeah I've read the submission guideline. 

I'm also new to writing and not much of a reader until my writing for YA class (with an awesome professor) and already have a nice list to plow through (so I'm open to suggestions). 

 

I have my 1st chapter to my story I'd like to submit. Doesn't have to be this coming monday, but I do have it complete and going to complete the 2nd chapter soon. ch.1 runs about 3500 words. 

 

Let me know when I'm next.

Thanks for having me, and I hope to be helpful too. 

I think you could still put it in for this week if you wanted. If Silk is cool with it. 

Welcome. Always nice to have more people about with new things.

That's interesting since the most subtle things I have noticed in the Cosmere actually seem to benefit the heroes. Kelsier's snapping, Raoden's noticing Aon Rao... I wonder if the anti-Adonalsium could actually be the good guy?

Well that would certainly put a different spin on restoring Adonalsium. And Hoid. 

Anti-Life

You turned your back and I wrecked your world. I robbed your people of their powers, their hopes, their future, themselves. What will you do when your friends, your enemies, your lover, are all Darkseid? When there is one body. One mind. One will. One life that is Darkseid. Will you be the enemy of all existence, then? What irony that will be, Son of Krypton?

All is one in Darkseid. This mighty body is my church. When I command your surrender, I speak with three billion voices. When I make a fist to crush your resistance. It is with three billion hands. When I stare into your eyes and shatter your dreams. And break your heart. It is with six billion eyes! Nothing like Darkseid has ever come among you: Nothing will again. I will take you to a hell without exit or end. And there I will murder your souls!

Yay! My question got answered!

I have nothing else to contribute except my earlier wondering that the Ghostbloods might be a worldhopping anti-17th Shard. 

But that's probably not true. 

Aw, thanks Nepene. You totally recognized my question even though I used a different name. 

Hi!

I won't go into minutiae, but instead focus on your reveal. You don't really need the minutiae anyhow. Your prose and description are fine. 

The problem with this chapter is that your character is incredibly passive. And even when it became clear that this was a necessity of her not really being there, we still have a whole seven pages of a point of view who is in the first person, who this is the reader's first introduction to-- and she is just watching other people doing things. 

And that's not good for an opening. 

I understand what you're trying to pull off, but I think you would be better served setting up your main character before doing something clever. 

Your character can dreamwalk and she set this thing up. This was apparently very hard and dangerous. Why not start with that first? I'm reminded of the opening scene from NK Jemisin's The Shadowed Sun, where her main character is finding someone's soul stuck inside their dying body so that they can be magically healed. There, we get through the opening who the character is, what she can do, and why she's doing it. To be fair, we get that here too, but not until we are simply told these things in the final paragraph after the character has been nearly absent the whole chapter. 

Once we know that Phytia can walk through dreams, you can do this scene, introduce ALL these people (and there are lot of people for a first chapter) but have her be more participatory because the reader knows what's up.

Maybe things start to go bad, but she can't do anything because she's not there. She's shouting at people, but they can't hear here. Maybe while she's keeping an eye on this meeting, something is happening on her end in a way that splits her attention (I don't know how your magic works yet). 

Without the clever twist, which isn't enough to undue that you're point of view character is so passive the first scene of your book, you can manage this scene differently. I think you might be better off doing away with this meeting and these other characters and really sink your teeth into your main character, her problems, and her decisions in the first chapter. 

Perhaps this is the instance that will illustrate where that distinction lies. 

I've returned to this project, which some of you may remember. If you do remember, you'll notice I've made some changes. 

Firstly, I've nixed Coil as a PoV. He's still there, but he's going to be a bit more of a mystery. I liked Coil. I named the book after him, but where it makes sense to start his story doesn't gel with where the book needs to start. Thus, I'm making him important, but not the centerpiece. I'll probably change the title at some point. 

I also really wanted to keep the chapters short. They're not super short, but they each contain only one scene. I think this might be a crutch, but if it gets me through the draft, I can always merge smaller clusters of chapters into one. 

The third thing I noticed is the language. I did some writing in the interim and one thing that I really wanted to get away from was how verbose I was in earlier drafts. I did that a bit last time, but I wanted to continue it even more. It's a bit snappier (I hope) and not as fantasy-y. I was going for a more YA feel. You'll have to let me know if that comes through. 

If you haven't read any of my prior attempts at this, that's probably better for your sake. Enjoy and let me know what you think. 

(Please excuse my notes in chapter three. They will be filled in in a later draft. The chapter is included here, even though it has a little bit missing, because I do not plan to go back and add the things they mention until I'm done with this draft. It's a strategy I'm relying on to maintain forward momentum.)

After months of hiatus, I actually have a thing. 

Oh gosh it was in the first paragraph of the link. Dumb me. 

So am I supposed to buy it tonight or tomorrow?

Did anything oppose Adonalsium before it shattered?

Edit!

Also:

Does everyone on Roshar except for the Shin have an Epicanthic Fold on their eyes or do the Shin actually just have giant baby-eyes?

I assumed it was a funny poke at that fantasy trope where the author has to designate that one character is ethnically Asian even though that world doesn't have an Asia. Like with Faile in Wheel of Time. 

So Roshar has like, all people with that eye fold, but does the same thing for people with Western European features. 

I'll be kind of sad if that doesn't turn out to be the case. 

NYC for me. Maybe this will be less crazy than the Wheel of Time signing two years back. 

It could be that all the Spren-Spren we see (Syl included) are HonorSpren and the weird Symbolheads Shallan sees are CultivationSpren. 

Maybe before Honor was shattered, Spren were more like the Symbolheads, and could still form bonds, but it's only now that they're just mindlessly attracted to things until the bond forms. 

Sort of like the broken Seons in Elantris. 

Because Shallan has an honorblade like Szeth (probably) does?

 

I dunno, she seems to use a spren bond.

She does talk to/use Spren, but it seems to work differently than Kaladin does. For one, the Spren Shallan sees already appear sentient. There's also more than one. 

I think Shallan (and maybe also Szeth) gets her power from Cultivation, not Honor. 

Jasnah is probably a Radiant. I can't pull the quote right now at work, but when Shallan shows Jasnah her drawings of the Symbolheads, she looks confused and then says something like "I thought... but no. Obviously not."

While some have cited that as the two being of different orders. I think Jasnah has been hiding a Nathal Bond like what Kaladin has and what Shallan (and Elhokar) have going on is something of a different Shard. 

Trying to cram both Shallan and Jasnah into the Radiant Orders for Soulcasting is no doubt meant to be confusing. 

But then, I don't think that Shallan is a radiant. I also don't think that Jasnah believes her to be. 

Has that whole Shu-Korath = Devotion and Shu-Dereth = Dominion assumption ever been confirmed?

Because...

1) Both religions use Seons with Aons at their core. 

2) Shu-Dereth mandates a chain of one-to-one devotions between individuals  No one serves Jaddeth except Wyrn. No one serves Wyrn directly except the individuals who are have pledged devotion to him, who then in turn link to others to themselves.

On on the other hand, Shu-Korath is led by one man, the Patriarch Seinalan, in a much more conventional religious set up. Is it that more akin to a religious dominion. 

I guess the idea that Aona and Skai have been splintered makes things inherently more complicated than one religion for Devotion and one for Dominion.

Still, it seems that assumption gets made a lot in Elantris threads. Is that because it's easy to link the bad guy religion to the bad guy shard or is it something Brandon confirmed?

I've mentioned this in the past, but I'm definitely suspicious of Renarin. However, because we've seen so little of him, those reasons are mostly thematic. Compared to characters like Kaladin and Dalinar, Renarin seems to go against theme (much like Shallan). 

For one, in a book where the two main, heroic characters give up Shards, it's worth noting that the only three who gain Shards by the end are Amaram, Sadeas, and Renarin. This is not good company for Renarin to maintain, narratively. 

Many of the themes in Stormlight also revolve around taking up responsibility and sacrificing for others to be worthy of power. There's a whole magic system where people have to make vows to protect in order to use power. Conversely, Renarin is just handed his power from his father with the expectation that it will fix his problems. That's no good.  

We've also had the lingering notion through Syl that Shards are "bad."  If there was going to be a focus that depicted the change that Shards might have on an individual, Renarin would be a good candidate. Maybe having just the plate makes someone lust for the blade? Maybe that's something that changed Sadeas? How would we know? We've never got too close a look at someone with just one before or even someone who has only recently obtained Shards. Maybe it changes a person. We don't know at this point.

BS has written many characters who, having little to no power, come into great power. It's almost always been a positive change for them. However, he even stated in the footnotes for Hero of Ages that, were Mistborn longer, he would have toyed with making Spook a villain. Stormlight is plenty long. Maybe Renarin is the opposite character. The person who gains power after having none for so long and, instead of becoming the responsible leader, finds he has a taste for it. 

We don't know enough right now, but the set up is all there.